Analyzing and Utilizing the Collaboration Structure for Reliable Router-Level Networks

As the Internet represents a key social infrastructure, its reliability is essential if we are to survive failures. Physical connectivity of networks is also essential as it characterizes reliability. There are collaboration structures, which are topological structures where two or more nodes are connected to a node, and collaboration structures are observed in transcriptional regulatory networks and the router-level topologies of ISPs. These collaboration structures are related to the reliability of networks. The main objective of this research is to find whether an increase in collaboration structures would improve reliability or not. We first categorize the topology into a three-level hierarchy for this purpose, i.e., top-level, middle-level, and bottom-level layers. We then calculate the reliability of networks. The results indicate that the reliability of most transcriptional regulatory networks is higher than that of one of router-level topologies. We then investigate the number of collaboration structures. It is apparent that there are much fewer collaboration structures between top-level nodes and middle-level nodes in router-level topologies. Finally, we confirm that the reliability of router-level topologies can be improved by rewiring to increase the collaboration structures between top-level and middle-level nodes. key words: Network reliability, transcriptional regulatory network, router-level topology, collaboration structure, power-law network,